The aim of the CELTIC DIGITAL INITIATIVE (CDI) is to make scarce resources available in an electronic format to students and scholars, both nationally and internationally. There are five major sections: Images (digitised pictures of interest to Celticists), Text Archive (PDF files of rare material), Articles (PDF files of selected publications by staff members), Celtic Noticeboard (an area devoted to announcements of forthcoming conferences, events, vacancies, publications etc.) and Celtic Journals (tables of contents of journals of Celtic studies interest). The Text Archive, however, is the single most important element of CDI.

One of the major desiderata within the field of Celtic Studies is the provision of an electronic resource of materials similar to that provided by JSTOR in other subject areas. This need is particularly acute in Celtic Studies as so much important material is to be found in hard-to-access sources, many of great age and not in great condition. In the field of medieval Irish, for example, we are particularly fortunate in having both CELT (the Corpus of Electronic Texts) and ISOS (Irish Script on Screen) active in our field of study. CELT makes available a large searchable database of Irish literature while ISOS provides high quality digital images of Irish manuscripts. However, the standard editions of many of the texts contained in both CELT and ISOS, along with detailed studies of them, are not available in electronic format and indeed are often only preserved in hard-to-access sources, many of which are out of print. Providing this material in electronic format completes the set of digital tools necessary for a thorough examination of our medieval literary culture in the Irish language; the case is similar for sources in the other Celtic languages.